What price the wooden spoon?

dungfungus said :

It may be time to think about a merger with the Cronulla Sharks who are also wooden spoon contenders. Seriously.

But 0x0=0

It may be time to think about a merger with the Cronulla Sharks who are also wooden spoon contenders. Seriously.

No question, these last couple of games have been woeful. But they had winning chances in their previous seven games. They tend to drift in and out of matches, and as soon as they fall behind by a decent margin they capitulate. The hard questions that need asking are;
1) Brett White and Shillington aren’t delivering – who can we trade for these two?
2) Campo is at his best when he takes on the defence. But he’s playing like Benji Marshall was last year when he got stale. If his knees are shot, well these are the tough calls that Ricky and co have got to make. Just make Fensom & Croker co captains. The Raiders made the finals without him a couple of years back with McCrone and Williams in his rookie season in the halves – they need to be big enough to admit that they got it wrong with Wighton there at 5/8 also.
3) Papalii is playing wounded – he needs recovery time. He’s playing like Ben Barba was last year.
4) I’m not sure Milford’s heart is at the Raiders. But other sides have worked out he’s our only strike weapon. I’d be blooding someone else….who wants to play with the Raiders.
5)INJURIES – Where are Mark Nicholls and Tom Learoyd Lars? They miss the Aggro these two provide dearly. And the threat of Edrick Lee.
6) you can’t build a club around players with off field issues. Carney, Monaghan, Dugan , Ferguson & Earl spring to mind

You also need to look at their hustle. Watch a game with a top ranking team and they run the whole game. They get back in line fast, they move with some purpose. The Raiders are buggered by 1/2 way through the first half. They need to be able to keep up.

Someone mentioned on the Sunday Footy show on 9 about how if they lived in Sydney they’d be running sandhills as punishment for the hiding on Saturday. Perhaps they need to do a few runs up Black Mountain and get their fitness up!!!

gazket said :

… The Raiders should bid him farewell now. I can’t believe they offered a $1million for him to stay…

Look’s like Milford has decided to turn his back on the club that gave him his chance. http://www.raiders.com.au/news/2014/05/12/anthony_milford_to_depart_raiders_at_end_of_2014.html

I’d like to see a clean-out happen now – bring through the young players who want to be at the club.

Ricky Stewart had cleaned out the trash from Parramatta and rebuilt the team that’s why Parra are better this year. Same thing needs doing at the Raiders. They also need to buy some senior players and start poaching from other NRL clubs.

Milford had the hide to say if the Raiders don’t start winning I’m leaving. Every player knows if they run at Milford they can swat him off like a fly. The Raiders should bid him farewell now. I can’t believe they offered a $1million for him to stay.

Raiders are a team of youngsters, most are playing above their grade. Raiders need a full rebuild. If your forwards can’t make ground the backs can’t do anything.
At the moment the Raiders would be flat out beating Braidwood.

Dropping a coach after a few games doesn’t make players tackle. I have no issue with Furner being sacked either the results were not there and not a fan of Stuarts ability to coach, but dropping him for who? Would another coach other than say a Bellamy or a Bennett get them playing better?

I don’t think our halves have been creative enough, especially in the first 7 games when we had chances to win them all. Wighton may become a good 5/8 but he isn’t doing that much now and neither is Campese at halfback. We won’t even go into how the team clearly centres around whether Milford has a good game or not. Croker has been our most creative player, mostly from rushing up in defence and catching kicks.
The last 2 games though were ridiculous and were lost based on bad defence. Especially after the high of beating Melbourne.
We missed our real opportunities with the lack of discipline and the players we lost because of it.

The first thing Ricky needs to do is drop Terry Campese. No one can question Terry’s commitment to the club, however stats don’t lie. 1 run for 4 metres against the Warriors, and not much better against Manly the week before.

It’s time to introduce a “results only” salary culture and terminate funding from the ACT Government.
Same for the non-resident ACT AFL team (I’ve forgotten what they are called). How is it possible that the ACT Government has committed $23 million for these l%$#rs?